“Um Left 4 Dead has no DLC coming out. Valve sucks.”
“Um I think you’ll find Fox news is totally unbiased source.”
“Um 5133201 is not a base-2 Euler pseudoprime jackass.”
“Um Ed, you might want to put your clothes back on.”

Honestly, it’s more than I can put up with some days.

I suppose such responses would come from someone playing a game–

Tom: you’re right, I sort of fudged that bit of my comment. I think I meant to say that they don’t have to read like buyers guides, you know, shopping lists of features which they may or may not have, and so on. They can have a bit of wit and personality to them. There may even be a personal pronoun or two.

Yes, they are about telling readers what you thought of a game (and by extension: what they might think of it), so that will inform their buying choices.

But not everything you write about games is designed to help people when they’re standing in GAME or browsing a website, even within a review. At least half of it is designed to entertain, or to allow the reader to empathise with an experience they haven’t (yet) had. Personally I don’t think all of that goes towards the question of whether or not they want to buy something. People read reviews for entertainment first, I think.

I guess it’s a style issue, either how a writer writes, or how the particular publication tailors its copy.

Although you should, to be honest, because both subjectiveness and objectiveness have their place in games reviews. On the one hand whether the reviewer found it enjoyable or not is clearly extremely important, on the other hand not everyone is a fan of every genre, and you really should consider who the game is aimed at before you rate it. Practically though that’s more a function of editing, making sure you’ve got the right person reviewing the right game.

Subjectiveness is only really useful when you know the reviewer’s tastes, then again reviews as a whole are only really useful when you know the reviewer. Just one reason I’d prefer to chuck out scores altogether.

My reviews are meant to be buyer’s guides. I recount subjective experiences because I think they help guide a buyer. And I take recommending a game in PC Gamer much more seriously than deciding to spend my own money on it. But we’re not going to restrict ourselves to only giving one game a month a high score in case people can’t afford the others. If there’s a wealth of good stuff, we should tell people that and trust them to know what they can afford. We even rate them on an incredibly fine scale so you always know which of the ones you’re interested in is the best.

If a reviewer doesn’t leave you with a sense of whether a game is worth the money, they’ve failed you utterly. If a reviewer recommends a game they wouldn’t buy with their own money, they’ve failed you utterly. And if a reviewer can’t recount their subjective experience and still guide you as a buyer, they’ve failed you utterly. I’m sure I’ve failed a lot of people utterly, and most of the reviews I read fail me utterly, but this is a thing worth doing well, so it’s worth keeping your standards high.

I seem to recall Tom’s own bemused recounting of his experience with Football Manager 2008 (roughly along the lines of PCG’s infamous ‘it’s a spreadsheet’ dictum), which was pretty amusing (and perfectly valid too, of course).

I don’t really think there’s much of a debate between whether you should write (art criticism) with personality, or write like a Reuters article, since that’s really what we’re talking about; state the facts, just as you see them.

J-Man: that wasn’t said with a bent to NGJ, it was a general description of what good arts journalism should be about. As for leaving it to Gillen: as he himself would admit, he did not begat NGJ.

Leave the NGJ to Mr.Gillen please.

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2008/12/08/when-managing-football-isnt-enough/

Where a reviewer who doesn’t understand or care for the genre and so ends up giving it a terrible score, regardless of the actual quality of the game.

a post made on garry’s blog about emails he gets telling him not “to brake a boys heart”

here is the link.

http://www.garry.tv/?p=683

Then I throw down Zero Punctuation and listen for all the BAD elements and decide if such things would irritate me enough to give it away.

Not sure if such a thing exists per se, but Twitter is a nice proxy.

That’s why EDGE magazine is weird, with its no-credit-given-to-each-article thingy. I saw Alec Meer contributed to one, so I looked cover to cover for his name it in. Aside from the mast head, it was totally Meerless.

On this extremely flimsy evidence, I think Tom Francis is actually a ninja with psychic powers exploiting the soft, malleable minds of gamers. He must be stopped; with volume of fire, we can overcome his GMA perspex award shield!

I’m by no means a professional reviewer. Still, I think that was a pretty good summary of what I think it takes to review a game. I would just want to add, reviewers have the duty to put themselves in the shoes of the average Joe who would approach a game similarly. Stuff like:

What are the things they would care about? What will they enjoy? What are the frustrations that they’ll encounter? Do the frustrations outweigh the good parts of the game?

Obviously, reviews will differ because this is by no means an objective process, but people will find out over time whose opinions they can trust. I repeatedly come to this and other game blogs because I trust the opinions presented.

A consumer spends £30-£50 on a game, plays it, and if (s)he hates it, they never play it again. A reviewer picks it up, tries again. Nobody ever reviews a game after picking it up, getting horribly owned, declaring it worthless, then submitting a pile of spleen to their editor.

Similarly: who didn’t love team fortress within minutes? The excellent art direction, use of visual cues, lovely delicious phong, tight mechanics, pure class balance… I didn’t think about those things. I just thought about how awesome it was to be a scout, running around pwning people. In ten seconds, I loved it.

A reviewer would then play what he doesn’t like. Play every class, do as many things as possible. Spend a while looking at the characters taunting in spawn, try to cram 10 treasured years of play into maybe five hours. A reviewer can tell you if you’ll like it in four weeks; if it’ll frustrate you. A reviewer can tell whether or not some tweak or feature will be causing a riot on the forums.

These aren’t just opinions – they’re educated commentary, and they aren’t designed to make up your mind for you. They’re recommendations, but it’s a poor game if the review doesn’t mention a type of person that won’t enjoy it.

In my opinion, anyway.

Also, games make more money this time of year. They save up the good ones for good big sales. Take me for example. If someone wants to get me a killer present, they just need to read my blog or facebook ramblings about Fallout 3 and L4D and Far Cry, and they know to get me one of those. It’s the one time of year non-gamers splash out on games for us greasy chaps.

But something else entirely, why can’t the PC Gaming industry spread itself out throughout the year? I mean, all the good long awaited games seem to come out in the autumn, while we have to suffer out a drought of games during the Summer and the Summer holidays.

Am I an art thief?

P.S.

Spore is a waste of money.

god, I don’t know whats more disgusting. Me acknowleding the information from THAT sight, or the fact that I’ve read enough WMD pages on TV Tropes to instintly come up with a Tardis for specific time lords.

It totally looks like a portaloo. Which time lord would travel in that?

I should reinstall Spore.

.>

What?

Tom once boycotted the Germans. Only then were the Allied nations ever able to turn the tide in World War 2.

“Oh? Oh! I’m sorry, I thought you had a connection to these terrorist attacks, so I ordered an invasion of your country. I am -so- sorry, I think I misread what you said; yes, yes, I see what I’ve done. My apologies.”

HTML is trying to break us apart, but we shall carry on together.